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Folsom-Howard Streetscape

Tame Traffic in SoMa

Folsom and Howard are two of the city’s high-injury corridors, the 12% of streets that account for over 70% of all crashes. During the five years from 2011 to 2016, over 300 people were injured and three lost their lives on these dangerous, fast, one-way streets, including 44 year-old Melissa Kitson who was walking on Howard, 26 year-old Katherine Slattery who was bicycling, and 24 year-old Amelie Le Moullac, who was killed on Folsom while riding her bicycle.

This year, Walk SF is leading a campaign to transform Folsom and Howard into safe, walkable, bike and transit-friendly streets, from 2nd to 11th, as part of the broader Vision Zero effort to end all traffic deaths by 2024 — and you can be part of it!

Tell the Board of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) you want safe, walkable, bike-friendly, and transit-oriented streets in the fall (sign up to be notified)

Key Improvements

Here are the top streetscape upgrades to make Folsom and Howard safe and greener for everyone, who lives, works, or travels on these streets, including the students at Bessie Carmichael Elementary and Middle schools.

The first set of improvements are the most basic interventions needed to enhance safety on this pair of fast, one-way freeway feeders:

Wider sidewalks and corner bulb-outs to make walking both safe and pleasant

Crosswalks with painted stripes, raised designs and signalized, mid-block locations to make it both safe and easy to travel by foot

Greenery and street amenities including people-scaled lighting and decorative paving

Parking protected bicycle lanes to significantly improve safety

The second set of improvements are the most robust interventions needed to enhance both safety and walkability on Folsom and Howard:

Reduce four lanes of traffic to two (instead of three) and narrow traffic lanes from 11 ft to 10 ft to reduce speeding

Make intersections safe for people walking with head start signals,pedestrian scrambles (where people can cross in all directions at once), corner bulb-outs or “daylighting” at corners with painted safety zones

Widen sidewalks with benches, people-scaled lighting, and trees and gardens to make walking more pleasant, and add public art and plazas to create a sense of neighborhood and promote community

Build raised crosswalks/intersections to promote yielding by slowing traffic andsignalized mid-block crossings to make it easy to travel by foot

Add strong safety treatments around Bessie Carmichael School at 7th and Howard, near family housing at 6th and Howard and 7th and Howard, by The Arc Community Center at 11th and Howard, close to the SoMa Family Resource Center at Mabini and Folsom, as well as between the Moscone Center and the Yerba Bunea Center for the Arts, which should have a pedestrian scramble

For the latest Folsom/Howard Streetscape project news and events, sign up today.